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The Empire Cites Back: The Occlusion of Non-Western Histories of International Relations and the Case of India

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Published date01 April 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00208817241247174
AuthorMartin J. Bayly
Date01 April 2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/00208817241247174
International Studies
61(2) 203 –213, 2024
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/00208817241247174
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Commentary
The Empire Cites Back:
The Occlusion of Non-
Western Histories of
International Relations
and the Case of India
Martin J. Bayly1
Abstract
The call for a ‘global’ and ‘post-Western’ international relations (IR) discipline
is rightly gathering momentum, yet arguably this research agenda contains
presumptions as to the absence of a historical tradition of IR thinking in
places such as India. Turning attention to marginalized histories of Indian IR,
this commentary on the global IR debate offers a historical corrective to these
presumptions and calls for greater attention to extra-European disciplinary
histories. In so doing, important patterns of co-constitution reveal the connected
histories of disciplinary development that challenge the analytical categories
that often characterize the global IR and post-Western IR literature. A more
historicized global IR debate offers a fruitful research agenda that explores the
multiple connected beginnings of IR as a global discipline responsive to a variety
of intellectual lineages, encompassing a variety of political purposes and revealing
entanglements of imperial and anti-imperial knowledge.
Keywords
India, international relations, global IR, post-Western IR
1London School of Economics and Political Science, International Relations Department, Houghton
Street, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Martin J. Bayly, London School of Economics and Political Science, International Relations
Department, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
E-mail: m.j.bayly@lse.ac.uk
Introduction: The Perennial Yet Perilous Call for a
'Non-Western' IR
What are the conditions that allow us to speak of ‘non-Western’, ‘post-Western’
or ‘global’ international relations (IR)? If we take the conventional narrative, the
‘rise’ of non-West compels us to pay attention to alternative visions of world

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